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chuckroA few of these I watched at home—including my last watch from my first batch of covid—and the last two I watched on planes back and forth to California.
Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers – Absolutely made “for me”. Chock full of 80s/90s cartoon references, but also some recent memes. Heavily influenced by Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Mulaney and Samberg are great and they aren’t doing the annoying chipmunk voices from the original cartoons. (And they got Tress MacNeil back as Gadget, though it’s a relatively minor role.) Basically, if you’re in the 38-42 age range and reasonably online, you should absolutely watch this movie.
Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness - In some ways it was just another Marvel movie, though to be fair, I like Marvel movies. They have a few creative fight scenes (music notes!) and fun cameos, and are true to Dr. Strange’s character of him being brilliant, impulsive, and entirely unwilling to consider consequences. I would say they’re really doing Scarlet Witch dirty throughout it and just repeating her storyline from Wandavision (but with the excuse that “the Darkhold did it” so she can come back if they want), and that’s annoying.
Everything Everywhere All at Once - The only thing I love more than an interesting take on the multiverse is a good Groundhog Day story, so this was already hitting my second-biggest sweet spot. It does something different and standout that doesn’t seem like a franchise or retread; it’s creative and clever and amusing. And it’s got middle-aged Asian people as all the main characters, which is noteworthy in and of itself. And it has a random reference to the song “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)” that I cannot explain but delighted me.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - This movie knew exactly what it was doing: Goofy comedy, Jim Carrey chewing scenery and doing spit-takes, direct references to various video games in the franchise, and standard cartoon “power of friendship / power of family” morals. Idris Elba was wasted as Knuckles but I’m glad he got a paycheck; Ben Schwartz continues to be pitch-perfect as Sonic. 100% good kids movie with bits for the Sega-Genesis-generation parents; absolutely accomplished its goal.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife - You know what the 2016 Ghostbusters movie remembered that this movie and the Ghostbusters comics always tend to forget? Ghostbusters was a comedy. It was made by a crew of comedians as a wacky workplace comedy that had some action and horror aspects to it. Then they made a Saturday morning cartoon that was also a comedy, where they took out the sex jokes and added more pratfalls and getting slimed. This? Is an action/horror coming-of-age film that happens to have some funny bits. It’s not bad for that-- Mckenna Grace is delightful as mini-Egon and Paul Rudd is just Paul Rudding it up. CGI Harold Ramis was necessary to the movie, but also…awkward and doesn’t sit right with me. I am, however, amused that the movie they made as a reaction to the 2016 film being “too woke” has a new team of kids that’s evenly gender split and only half white. That’s not a compromise that’ll actually appease the fanboys!
Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers – Absolutely made “for me”. Chock full of 80s/90s cartoon references, but also some recent memes. Heavily influenced by Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Mulaney and Samberg are great and they aren’t doing the annoying chipmunk voices from the original cartoons. (And they got Tress MacNeil back as Gadget, though it’s a relatively minor role.) Basically, if you’re in the 38-42 age range and reasonably online, you should absolutely watch this movie.
Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness - In some ways it was just another Marvel movie, though to be fair, I like Marvel movies. They have a few creative fight scenes (music notes!) and fun cameos, and are true to Dr. Strange’s character of him being brilliant, impulsive, and entirely unwilling to consider consequences. I would say they’re really doing Scarlet Witch dirty throughout it and just repeating her storyline from Wandavision (but with the excuse that “the Darkhold did it” so she can come back if they want), and that’s annoying.
Everything Everywhere All at Once - The only thing I love more than an interesting take on the multiverse is a good Groundhog Day story, so this was already hitting my second-biggest sweet spot. It does something different and standout that doesn’t seem like a franchise or retread; it’s creative and clever and amusing. And it’s got middle-aged Asian people as all the main characters, which is noteworthy in and of itself. And it has a random reference to the song “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)” that I cannot explain but delighted me.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - This movie knew exactly what it was doing: Goofy comedy, Jim Carrey chewing scenery and doing spit-takes, direct references to various video games in the franchise, and standard cartoon “power of friendship / power of family” morals. Idris Elba was wasted as Knuckles but I’m glad he got a paycheck; Ben Schwartz continues to be pitch-perfect as Sonic. 100% good kids movie with bits for the Sega-Genesis-generation parents; absolutely accomplished its goal.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife - You know what the 2016 Ghostbusters movie remembered that this movie and the Ghostbusters comics always tend to forget? Ghostbusters was a comedy. It was made by a crew of comedians as a wacky workplace comedy that had some action and horror aspects to it. Then they made a Saturday morning cartoon that was also a comedy, where they took out the sex jokes and added more pratfalls and getting slimed. This? Is an action/horror coming-of-age film that happens to have some funny bits. It’s not bad for that-- Mckenna Grace is delightful as mini-Egon and Paul Rudd is just Paul Rudding it up. CGI Harold Ramis was necessary to the movie, but also…awkward and doesn’t sit right with me. I am, however, amused that the movie they made as a reaction to the 2016 film being “too woke” has a new team of kids that’s evenly gender split and only half white. That’s not a compromise that’ll actually appease the fanboys!
